


A Good Enough Reason

by cloudymagnolia



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Awkward First Times, F/M, First Time, One Shot, S/S cuteness, Vimes being an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-07 23:51:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12243033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudymagnolia/pseuds/cloudymagnolia
Summary: On his wedding night, Sam Vimes finally finds a good enough reason to quit drinking for good.Actually, it's three nights after the wedding. But Sybil does, eventually, get the wedding night she deserves.





	A Good Enough Reason

Their wedding was… well, it was hideous. Even by Ankh-Morpork standards, where a little blood-letting is considered quite normal during most society occasions, the patrician getting shot by a mysterious projectile and the wedding hall getting turned into a makeshift field hospital for him was considered… inauspicious.*

_*The groom running, bleeding, for the exit, however, was quite normal._

But this _was_ Ankh-Morpork, and, more importantly, it _was_ Sybil Ramkin’s wedding, and since the food was prepared and the guests were sitting down, the wedding party, propelled along by the grim determination of Lady Sybil, Jolly Well Got On With Things.

True, the groom arrived a half hour late to his own wedding, covered in sewage and smelling of, frankly, shit, and had to be hurried along to a side room to be sloughed off and wrung out.** True, the best man was mildly concussed, and the bride's dress probably would have looked better before several yards of it had been torn off to bandage the patrician’s thigh. But at least with the splatters of red around the hem, her Aunt Winifred couldn't give her a lecture on wearing white to her wedding when the groom had already been living in her house for six weeks, nevermind the fact that they stayed in separate bedrooms and Sam had never even looked at her below the face.***

_**Lady Sybil, with either prescient foresight or a commanding grasp on her husband-to-be’s psyche, had instructed Willikins the butler, as part of the wedding plans, to be standing by with a razor, a spare suit in Vimes’s size, and a bottle of Mrs. Rue’s Fast-Acting Bruise Remover._

_***This was untrue. She had just never caught him._

And if wizards and coppers and aristocrats all have something in common, it's a certain bloody stubborn-mindedness, and in the end, if it wasn't the most punctual or cleanest wedding ever attended by Ankh-Morpork high society, it was at least a wedding to remember.

Vimes went through it as if in a daze. He was vaguely aware of repeating some official-sounding words after the Dean, and of slipping a ring made of more gold than he had ever even seen in one place before a few months ago over his bride's ring finger. He was aware of the Dean looking at him expectantly, and of Sybil blushing and looking nervous, and then after a brief shove from Fred Colon he stood on tip-toe to give his bride -- now his wife -- a kiss.

There were cheers, and an iconographer was taking pictures, and it dawned on Vimes that that was it, he was married, and while it might have been acceptable for him to be feeling nothing but eye-glazing terror before, he really ought to be feeling happy _now_ . But as they walked across the university's courtyard to the dining room, where cocktails and canapes were being served, he couldn't help but think that the only thing he did feel was... nothing. And maybe that was a relief, he thought, as he snagged a glass of wine as it went past him on a tray. Maybe if he started feeling, he'd be feeling the deaths of Cuddy and of Angua (not that he believed for a minute that Angua was going to stay dead) and of all the poor buggers who had been murdered by that bastard Cruces, and maybe even -- a part of him treacherously thought -- of the little piece of him that couldn’t be _him_ without a helmet and without a badge.

And so maybe the best thing for it would be to put off feeling altogether.

He drank too much at the reception, but he was fairly sure he managed to avoid embarrassing himself or -- more importantly -- Sybil. And after that there was the blessed darkness of a blacked-out stupor -- the kind of that didn't refresh, but at least put off the failure of most of vital organs -- and then the next day was the wedding brunch and wedding tea and all the other little events that seemed to trail along after a wedding like lingering hangers-on.

The day after that was poor Cuddy’s funeral, and Vimes had gotten good at not feeling at _all_ during those, and then that evening was the fateful letter from Car - from the patrician.

It wasn't until Vimes walked Carrot to the door that night -- the front door, pointedly, although by then it was past midnight and there was no one to see the statement being made -- and Carrot had handed him a brown envelope of a familiar, comforting weight, that Vimes began to get any feeling back at all. He shut the door on Carrot’s retreating back and turned the envelope over and over in his hands. Finally, stealing himself, he ripped open the paper and held badge 177 up to the light.

Someone had cleaned it, and even polished it, but it had the dent in the top left corner, just where it should be, and he knew the pin at its back could stick like blazes if you weren't careful.

Willikins materialized at his shoulder.

“Her Ladyship has retired for the evening,” he said. Was that a faint note of disapproval in the butler's voice, perhaps because Vimes had dared to open the door without consulting him first?

“Right you are,” Vimes said. He flicked the copper disk into the air and caught it, putting it in his pocket. As he made his way up the grand staircase to the master bedroom -- Sybil had moved out of her bedroom on their wedding night, just as he had moved out of his -- it occurred to him to take stock of his life. The Watch was growing. He had a place to go tomorrow, and work to do.

He lived in the kind of house he wouldn't have even believed really existed, as a boy, he thought as he washed his face in the hot running water. And his life now contained things like softness, and velvet, and heated bath towels. He shrugged into his dressing gown.

And not least, he thought, pausing in the doorway to the bedroom to take in the sight of Sybil, reclining on her side of the bed with a book propped open on her knees, a woman who cared for him enough to let him into her house, and her life, and her heart.

He shook his head, wondering if he pinched himself, if he’d wake up from the dream. The motion caught Sybil’s eye, who looked up and smiled at him. It was still a bit of a shock to see Sybil without the mounds of curls piled high upon her head, but the wigs, he now knew, were kept in a special cabinet while she slept. He felt an unfamiliar wave of tenderness wash over him as he watched her, wisps of reddish hair making a halo around her head, plain cotton nightdress allowing her figure -- finally free at the industrial-strength corsetry of her formal wear -- to fill out to its ample, natural girth.

Hang on. He felt his brow furrow, of its own accord. There was something not quite -

“Coming to bed, dear?” Sybil asked, and Vimes found himself obeying the unspoken command in her words, just like he always did.

“Is that a new nightgown, dear?” he asked, as he sank into the mountain of pillows on her -- _their,_ he corrected himself -- bed.

“An old one, in fact,” Sybil said, making a note in the dog-eared volume she was looking at. “The new one wasn’t very practical, with all that satin and lace, and anyways, it wasn’t doing the job.”

This was said pleasantly and without rancor, and Sam Vimes, inexperienced as he was as a husband or even as a lover can perhaps be forgiven for failing to hear the undertones beneath her words. Meanwhile, Vimes was staring up at the ceiling, thinking over his first two days of marriage, and was coming to a conclusion.

“I haven’t been a very _attentive_ husband, these past few days, have I?”

“That’s all right, dear,” Sybil said from beside him, and reached over to pat his hand. “You’ve had other things on your mind, after all.”

Vimes’s eyes were beginning to drift closed, lulled by the softness of the pillows beneath his head, the scritching of Sybil’s pencil across the page, and the gentle, musky scent of whatever Sybil put in her hair to help keep it flame retardant beneath her wig.

“And anyways, I know I’m not exactly the woman a man dreams of having in his bed on his wedding night.”

Again, the tone of voice was calm and tender, but this time the words triggered the warning bells in Vimes’s brain.

His eyes slammed open. His thoughts scrambled away under the onslaught of panic, but as they fled, Vimes was able to make out three of them. They were, in order:

  1. I knew I forgot something.
  2. She thinks _what_? And,
  3. Oh bugger.



“Sybil, dear,” Vimes said carefully, rolling himself up on one elbow, “do you mean to tell me that we didn’t -- we haven’t --” he trailed off, face flaming.

“No, Sam,” Sybil said, surprised. That was the worst bit, he would remember later. She wasn’t even _upset_ . She wasn’t even _disappointed_ in him.

“But -- I mean -- our wedding night --”

“No, dear,” Sybil said, and now at least there was a hint of irritation in her voice. “You were too drunk. You were snoring as soon as I carried you up the stairs and put you to bed.”

Vimes gaped at her, open mouthed.

And Sam Vimes was never to know it, but that moment was one where the Trousers of Time split before him, and the universe went careening off in two separate directions. In the other universe, Sam Vimes died some years later, bitter, penniless, broken, and alone.

In this universe, Sam Vimes looked into his wife’s kind, understanding eyes, and resolved for the very last time that for the rest of his life he would never touch another drop of alcohol.

“Sybil,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite alright, Sam,” Sybil said with forced, brittle cheerfulness that was ten times worse than any shouting could have been. “The idea of consummating a marriage is quite old-fashioned, anyways. And I know _dozens_ of happily married couples who never have marital contact at all. I think some of the ladies find that to be frankly a relief. And I know that I’m not -- well -- that I’m bigger than men really want their ladies to be, and in Quirm they say you always start eating with your eyes, and --”

Vimes watched, paralyzed, for several seconds longer as a woman who, in ages past, would have been worshipped as a fertility goddess continued to convince herself that a sexless marriage was Jolly All Right, and probably her fault anyways.

Ye gods, he thought, watching her chest rise and fall, his mouth going a little drier each time, here is a woman who no man can look at without thinking about sex,**** who must have spent her entire adult life wondering why gentlemen have a tendency to scuttle behind waist-high pieces of furniture after speaking with her for any length of time when her bosoms were at eye height, and she thought that he… didn’t… _want_ … her.

_****Even if the next thought was often “ouch.”_

What he did next, he would always remember as one of the braver things he did in his life.

He leaned over and planted a kiss on Sybil’s lips.

“Sybil, I,” he began, when he came away, but he didn’t actually have anything to say, so he contented himself with kissing her again.

This time, when they parted, it was Sybil who said,

“Sam, I…”

They stared at each other for a moment, and then Sybil reached her hands up to his face just as Vimes swung his leg up and over his wife.

He wasn’t straddling her, more sort of resting in the divot between her hips. He found himself at a loss for what to do next, but his hands seemed to have an idea of their own, and that was to bury themselves in Sybil’s breasts. They were soft -- his hands sank into them invitingly, and he felt the situation between his legs get a little heavier as he massaged them. He heard Sybil make a little noise in the back of her throat, which he decided was a good sign, and then felt her nipples become taut beneath her nightdress, which he _knew_ was a good sign.

He was beginning to wonder how to delicately bring up the fact that they were both still clothed when Sybil opened her mouth beneath his own, sucking on his lower lip. She had been educated in Quirm, he remembered vaguely, before the feeling of Sybil’s tongue against his own made him go entirely senseless. He spent the next several minutes groaning into her mouth and grinding his erection down into the heavenly softness between her thighs. Eventually he gathered the presence of mind to begin running his hands up and down her curves, looking for the hem of her nightgown.

He found it -- eventually -- and began pushing it up while following the shape of her thigh, trying to be as sensual about it as possible. He spared a thought of thanks to the infrequent romantic liaisons in his past, and not least to the seamstresses who, when the young lads of Cockbill Street had finally saved up enough money and enough courage to buy their first night of negotiable affection, made sure they left with a basic education on how to please a woman.

His thoughts derailed as his hands hit a snag.

“Um, Sybil,” he said, when he finally mustered the willpower to disentangle his tongue, “how do I get this damn’ thing off?”

She stared blankly up into his eyes for a moment, then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, dear, there are buttons.” She made a vague shooing motion with her hands, and, obediently, Vimes rolled himself off of her. He fought the bloody stupid temptation to hide his erection under a pillow, and watched in mingled fascination and horror as Sybil unfastened a row of near-invisible buttons on either side of the garment so that she could pull it off over her head.***** Then there were her knickers, which another time, Vimes would have very much enjoyed taking off of her, but for expediency’s sake he left to her.

_*****As a child, he’d wondered what the rich did with all their time. Now he knew: they spent it on buttons._

He realized that Sybil was now naked, and he, emphatically, wasn’t, so he yanked off his nightshirt and kicked off his drawers and, once Sybil was lying back down, settled himself back on top of her. He kissed her once, then traced a line of kisses down her jaw, down her neck, to her right breast.

“Oh, Sam,” Sybil whispered as he brushed his lips over her nipple.

“Oh, _Sam_ ,” she groaned a moment later, clenching her thighs around his erection, when he sucked it into his mouth.

The sudden pressure around his rigid flesh was almost enough to break him, and he shuddered, bringing his hands down to part her thighs. He found her opening and was briefly astonished by the amount of wetness between her legs. Then the smell of her arousal hit him like a hammer, and his fingers found the little nub of flesh above her opening and began stroking it, just in case there was any more moisture her body wanted to provide.

There was a happy sigh from above him, and then a voice said shyly, “I like circles, actually, Sam.” He changed the motion of his hand and was rewarded with a long, low moan, which, he thought to himself, was probably the most erotic thing he’d heard in his life, ever.

He held out a few seconds longer before asking, “Are you ready?”

“Yes, Sam.”

As it was, he didn’t catch the little waver in her voice, and so found himself surprised when, in the middle of sheathing himself inside her, he hit a barrier.

His mouth popped open.

It had never occurred to him that Sybil might be a _virgin_.

As a teenager, he had fantasized about bedding a virgin. There was something about being someone’s first that appealed to the base, animal instincts inside him. You never forgot your first, after all. It had never happened, and he likely owed what little skill he possessed to the more experienced women who had gone to bed with him over the years.

The boy from Cockbill Street would never, in a million years, have dreamed that he’d be taking a woman’s virginity in his forties.

And _no one_ from that side of Morpork would have dreamed that the woman in question would be his _wife_.

“Do you -- want me to… keep going?” he asked, suddenly unsure.

“Yes, Sam.”

“It might hurt -- not normally, but just because --”

“I know, Sam.”

His fingers found her clitoris again, rubbing circles over it with a calloused finger, trying to prepare her as best he could. Then he took a deep breath, and forced himself the rest of the way in.

Sybil gasped.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Vimes hissed, stopping everything but the motion of his fingers.

“That’s quite alright, Sam,” Sybil said bravely. He couldn’t see her face from this angle, but he could just imagine her chin jutting out.

“Shall I -- shall I continue?” he asked.

“Yes, Sam. And… if you could press a little harder with your hand…”

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He would give anything not to hurt her, but holding himself in that tight, wet sheath without moving had been _agonizing_.

He pulled out and pushed back in a few times, trying to find a rhythm gentle enough not to cause Sybil any additional discomfort but forceful enough to do the job. After a few experimental thrusts, he settled on a pace, and let his mind fall away to nothing but the feeling of his wife all around him and the movement of his hand on her clit.

It was _amazing_ , he thought as his breath started coming in great shuddering gasps, that a woman with hips as ample as Sybil’s could be as tight as she was inside. He missed his rhythm, and fumbled, and wound up jamming his hand into her clitoris.

 _Damn, damn, damn_ , he thought, but then Sybil arched her back and gasped and writhed, so after a moment’s thought, he did it again. The third time he did it, her hands came up to wend themselves in his hair, and she brought her hips up to meet his thrust.

Feeling smug, Vimes allowed himself to speed up, sinking deeper and deeper each time, until he was up to his balls inside her and he had to move his hand because it was getting in the way. But it seemed like the weight of his thrusts was enough to give Sybil what she needed, because after a few moments, her breathless gasps became the words, “Faster, Sam!”

His control broke then, and he pounded into her as she gasped for him to do it faster, faster, _faster_. And finally, when the ridged walls all around him began to shudder and shake with her orgasm, and his balls were dripping with her wetness, he buried his face in her chest and roared his release.

They lay like that for quite some time.

Finally, when his muscles seemed to be cooperating, he withdrew and pushed himself up on his arms.

“Are you alright, Sybil?”

“I’m better than alright, Sam,” Sybil said dreamily, and a little piece of him puffed out its chest and preened. He rolled onto his back, and they lay in silence a little longer.

“I’m sorry,” he said, grabbing her hand and bringing it up to his lips.

His wife laughed.

“My dear, it was quite worth waiting for.”

And a few minutes later, once they’d collected the pillows and their nightshirts and blown out the lamp, Vimes fell asleep, cradling his wife.


End file.
